Reflections, commentaries, critiques and ideas from 40 years experience in the fields of Community Development, Community Education and Social Justice. Useful tools and techniques that I have learnt also added occassionally.

Pages

The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Monday, 12 June 2017

Remembering the Grandfather of Nonviolence

This week I am re-posting a blog that I wrote four years ago. Four years ago I wrote about the "Grandfather of Nonviolence" and his nonviolent resistance to British colonisation in New Zealand around half a century before Gandhi. Now (June 2017, almost 136 years later) the government of New Zealand formally apologised to the inhabitants of Parihaka and to the descendants of Te Whiti, Tohu and those that followed them. For interested readers here is a link to the news item about this historic apology.

Below is the blog I wrote four years ago.

****************************************

Mohandas K Gandhi has often been referred to as the “father of nonviolence.” Certainly, Gandhi did much to make nonviolence a recognised and moral strategy of conflict and resistance, but he did not invent it.

Te Whiti o Rongomai

Almost half a century before Gandhi on the slopes of Taranaki (one of the highest mountains in New Zealand’s North Island) two Māori leaders, Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, were utilising nonviolent resistance methods against British colonisers.

Prelude

During the 1860s New Zealand had witnessed land wars between the colonising Europeans and the indigenous owners, the Māori. With the Māori largely militarily defeated, the government confiscated large areas of land, including land around Taranaki.

In 1867 Te Whiti and Tohu founded the village of Parihaka on land that had been “confiscated.” They declared that they would not use weapons to hold onto the land that they had occupied for centuries before the coming of the European. Initially this action was of no threat to the government as there were too few colonial settlers desiring land. The village of Parihaka flourished. Taranaki’s Medical Office visited in 1871 and described the village as having an abundance of food, no disease and that they were “the finest race of men (sic) I have ever seen in New Zealand.”

The Ploughmen
However, during the 1870s Taranaki was experiencing a surge in immigration. In 1879 surveyors were marking out roads and plots for European settlers. In May of that year Māori ploughmen began ploughing the fields that were supposedly “owned” by white settlers. The government responded by arresting the ploughmen, who offered no resistance. As soon as they were arrested others took their place. Te Whiti encouraged them to nonviolence by exhorting

“Go put your hands to the plough. Look not back. If any come with guns or swords, be not afraid. If they smite you, smite not in return. If they rend you, be not discouraged. Another will take up your good work.”

By August that year, over 200 ploughmen had been arrested. Fearing that if brought to trial many would be freed the Native Minister (John Bryce) introduced a Bill to Parliament that ensured that the prisoners would be held in custody indefinitely.

The Fencers

1880 saw the government building roads in the area including one that led directly to Parihaka. These roads were built mainly by unemployed men with the promise of free land. The Māori response, under Te Whiti’s leadership, was to erect fences across the roads. Again, as soon as the fences were pulled down, Māori quickly re-erected them.

With the government continuing to sell “confiscated” land in the area, Te Whiti’s followers continued to fence, plough and cultivate the lands paying no heed to survey pegs or notices of sale.

Invasion
By October 1881 the New Zealand Premier (Richard Hall) with the re-imposed Minister of Native Affairs (John Bryce) completed plans to invade Parihaka.

At dawn on 5 November 1881 almost 1,600 armed constabulary and volunteers encircled Parihaka. Although settler newspapers were claiming that Te Whiti was fortifying and arming Parihaka, the troops were met by “a line of children across the entrance… (who) sat there unmoving… even when a mounted officer galloped up. There were skipping-parties of girls on the road.” (first-hand account given by Colonel William Bazire Messenger)

Arriving at the centre of the village the invaders found 2,500 Māori sitting together. The soldiers were offered food and drink by the Parihaka inhabitants. Te Whiti and others put up no resistance to their arrest. Te Whiti was charged, cynically, with “wickedly, maliciously and seditiously contriving and intending to disturb the peace” and held without trial.

Upon his release in 1883 Te Whiti returned to Parihaka and continued to lead nonviolent protest at colonist occupation. He was arrested and imprisoned again in 1886 for six months.

Parihaka continued as a centre of nonviolent resistance until the death of both Te Whiti and Tohu in 1907.

Epilogue
Between 2001 and 2006 the New Zealand government formally apologised to four of the tribes involved in the resistance. Redress amounting to millions of dollars was paid out.

Was Te Whiti o Rongomai the Grandfather of Nonviolence? Perhaps he was. There are suggestions that Gandhi was aware of Te Whiti and his teachings, via a couple of Irish journalists who had visited Parihaka and later met with Gandhi.

No comments:

Post a Comment

This blogsite is dedicated to positive dialoque and a respectful learning environment. Therefore, I retain the right to remove comments that are: profane, personal attacks, hateful, spam, offensive, irrelevant (off-topic) or detract in other ways from these principles.

Follow by Email

Followers

Search RainbowJuice blog

About Me

I have almost 40 years experience working (paid and unpaid, government and non-government) in community development/education and social justice fields. I have continued to keep myself abreast of philosophies and theories in these and related fields. This blogsite will offer ideas, thoughts, reflections on these fields as well as giving some tools and techniques. I don't pretend that these will be original but I do hope that they will be able to translate some of these diverse ideas into coherent forms accessible to workers in the areas.